People Change Management in Business Transformation

Dear Network, I like to share a Lesson’s Learned on People Change Management in Business Transformation with you.

We all know the importance of Stakeholder Alignment in the context of Expectation Management. I just experienced this critical success factor in my last Business Transformation Project.

In our Lesson’s Learned at project end, we discussed the The Marathon Effect (a commonly observed Effect and Risk in Business Transformation projects, likening it to a marathon start where only professional athletes begin the race first, while the rest of the runners wait. This delay can cause those at the back of the group to take up to an hour to cross the starting line, during which the lead runners are already halfway through the race. The lead participants remain unaware of the struggles behind them as their focus is solely on winning the race)

In my case the Core Team (a small team of involved managers, that have been intensively working on the change from the beginning have accelerated since the project started) left behind the Key Stakeholders from the Leadership Team in this marathon. The effect was a growing Awareness Gap of the magnitude of change and required time and resources for implementation. When the Core Team was ready to move to the next phase, the Management Group had not started mentally embracing the change. As a result, the project was put on hold.

My conclusion: People Change Management is the by far more complex challenge compared to the obvious technical aspects of a transformation and thus requires more allocation of time and resources. I found this enlightening short article from Caspar Jans referring to

4 critical phases:

(1) "Awareness" (people have heard or read about the transformation).

(2) "Understanding" (people actually understand why the transformation is required).

(3) "Commitment" (in this phase the transformation finds a way from your brain to your heart and you find yourself defending the transformation to other people).

(4) "Action" (you now act according to the new model).